# AI Engineer

**Company**: Instabase
**Location**: San Francisco, CA
**Work arrangement**: hybrid
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: full-time
**Salary**: $230,000 to $315,000
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Technology

**Apply**: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/instabase/jobs/8635719002?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_200de08b-cd5

## Description

At Instabase, we're focused on democratising access to cutting-edge AI innovation to enable any organisation to solve previously unsolvable unstructured data problems in their industry.

As a Staff AI Engineer on the Agent Harness team, you will design the foundation of this runtime execution environment, enabling SuperApp to act as a resilient, highly scalable, and ultra-secure agentic operating system for the enterprise.

## Role Overview

We are seeking a visionary systems-minded AI engineer to lead the design, architecture, and development of the Agent Harness. In this role, you will bridge the gap between advanced foundation models (LLMs) and reliable, production-grade execution.

## Responsibilities

- Harness Architecture & State Management: Architect the next-generation execution runtime (Agent Harness) that drives SuperApp’s planning, reasoning, memory retention, and tool-execution loops. Build reliable state machines capable of pausing, resuming, and versioning agent trajectories.

- Secure Sandbox Execution: Design and scale highly secure, isolated, and ephemeral environments (using Docker, gVisor, WebAssembly, or microVMs) to execute agent-generated code safely without putting host infrastructure at risk.

- Tool & Integration Frameworks: Build and maintain high-throughput APIs and integration layers (such as the Model Context Protocol - MCP) that connect SuperApp to external services, databases, web search utilities, and complex file processors.

- Security & Guardrail Engineering: Engineer robust system-level guardrails to detect and mitigate prompt injection, defend against jailbreak attempts, and ensure strict compliance with system prompt instructions and data isolation boundaries.

- Performance & Context Optimization: Implement advanced routing, context window pruning, and context caching strategies to optimize LLM token usage, minimise round-trip latencies, and drastically reduce the operational cost of complex agent loops.

- Technical Strategy & Mentorship: Write comprehensive high-level design documents, align cross-functional engineering teams on the technical roadmap, and mentor senior and mid-level software engineers across the organisation.

## Requirements

- Experience: Minimum 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of designing, scaling, and operating mission-critical distributed systems.

- Agentic AI Expertise: 2+ years of production experience building or modifying agent execution environments, LLM orchestrators, or tool-calling frameworks (e.g., custom runtimes, LangChain, AutoGen, or similar systems).

- Backend Mastery: Expert proficiency in Go and Python. You have a pragmatic, deep understanding of concurrent programming, microservices, gRPC, and highly scalable API design.

- Runtime Isolation & Security: Strong experience with containerisation and virtualisation technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) and a solid grasp of sandboxing untrusted code execution.

- Distributed Systems Fundamentals: Deep familiarity with message brokers (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ), caching infrastructure (Redis), and relational/non-relational database design.

## Nice to Have

- Prior experience developing developer tools, SDKs, or extensible plug-in architectures.

- Experience with frontend integration (React, TypeScript) to support human-in-the-loop debugging interfaces or agent visual builders.

- Experience working in high-growth, fast-paced startup environments.

## Compensation

The base salary range for this role is $230,00 to $315,000 + bonus, equity, and benefits. The actual pay may vary based on factors such as location, experience, and skills.

## Benefits

- Flexible PTO: Because life is better when you actually live it!

- Comprehensive Coverage: Top-notch medical, dental, and vision insurance.

- 401(k) with Matching: We’ve got your back for a secure future.

- Parental Leave & Fertility Benefits: Supporting you in growing your family, your way.

- Therapy Sessions Covered: Mental health matters, 10 free sessions through Samata Health.

- Wellness Stipend: For gym memberships, fitness tech, or whatever keeps you thriving.

- Lunch on Us: Enjoy a lunch credit when you're in the office.

## Skills

### Required
- distributed backend systems
- runtime isolation
- stateful agent choreography
- Go
- Python
- concurrent programming
- microservices
- gRPC
- highly scalable API design
- containerization
- virtualization technologies
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- message brokers
- caching infrastructure
- relational/non-relational database design

### Nice to have
- developer tools
- SDKs
- extensible plug-in architectures
- frontend integration
- React
- TypeScript

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Source: [Apply at job-boards.greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/instabase/jobs/8635719002?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)